In this ever-changing world of 201 0, we are more closely interconnected than ever before. English plays a key role in this world's communication as a global or international language- making intercultural connections and bridging differences in the process. It is critically important and challenging for people to learn skills for interacting in this global society. ESL/EFL teachers, educators, and administrators become key resources for learning and transmitting the knowledge, skills, and strategies for using English in a variety of social, business, or academic interactions. Immigrants, refugees, and international students need to learn more than the linguistic structure of the English language. To communicate effectively and competently, they need to learn cultural and intercultural knowledge, skills, and attitudes for navigating those intercultural situations. This exploratory study examined the roles of cultural and intercultural knowledge, skills, and competency of ESLIEFL teachers and educators in the teaching of language. An electronic survey was used to explore how ESL/EFL teachers and educators were defining the terms cultural and intercultural, how and to what extent were cultural and intercultural concepts being taught, where educators were receiving their information, and if, and how, were they assessing students' learning. Results indicated that many teachers and educators were not receiving primary cultural and intercultural information from courses connected to MA TESOL programs, that confusion exists over the definitions of cultural and intercultural, and that in many cases intercultural concepts and competency were not being integrated into class curricula. It appears clear that the designers and teachers in foreign language programs would be well served by adopting a more interdisciplinary approach to foreign language teaching and by collaborating with those who could provide information, clarity, and freshness for the integration of cultural and intercultural competency into current programs.

This qualitative narrative study investigated the relationship between emerging adults’ understandings of themselves as writers and their autobiographical memories of writing. Narrative data, largely elicited through semi-structured interviews, were collected from 14 participants who were recruited from six postsecondary institutions. Recruitment efforts aimed to yield participants who had divergent educational experiences, career ambitions, and dispositions towards writing, and who inhabited divergent racial, social, and cultural identities. The study contributes to writer identity research by applying a sociocultural framework that holds memory, narrative, identity, and culture as reflections—and, often, distortions—of each other. The research questions, asked through this lens, aimed to provide insight into the emotional residues of pre-college writing experiences, the potential patterning of narrated memories or identities among participants, and the ways in which the stories participants shared and the identities they storied shape each other. While this is fundamentally an inquiry into the narrative features of writer identity, it is also a study about how certain lived writing experiences reincarnate as highly emotive autobiographical memories; even if such memories tend to be unstable, unreliable, and suggestable, they are nonetheless meaningful reflections of the lingering effects of the past. Through this retrospective study, a portrait emerges of classroom conditions and writing experiences that are particularly hospitable to the nurturement of positive memories and healthy writing identities, as well as to the inverse. This research is intended to speak to both secondary English teachers and English teacher educators and college composition instructors by bridging secondary and postsecondary understandings of how student writers are moving between worlds, the memories they are bringing with them, and the ways in which they might be storying their writer identities en route.

The purpose of this study is an investigation of instructors‟ perceptions of composition learning objectives focusing on which should be taught and which should be emphasized. The researcher observed that instructors do not regard all course objectives in English Composition courses equally; emphasizing some and giving others brief consideration. From this observation, this study was developed to measure objectives as well as to examine principal reasons for the differences in perception. Using an 18-question (16 content area and two demographic) survey based on content areas chosen to mirror general learning objectives in composition courses, along with six focused interviews, the researcher discovered some levels of agreement, some of disagreement, and some areas of neutrality. The researcher has established some connections and some disconnects between some of the general learning objectives from English Composition courses, which are intriguing and thought provoking. Since instructors deliver instruction using learning objectives as the goals to be achieved in the English Composition courses they teach, it is prudent to be concerned with how these objectives are perceived and implemented by the users. The data collected conclusively reflects instructors‟ perceptions of learning objectives are not all the same. As the researcher measured instructors‟ perceptions of English Composition learning objectives, the results demonstrate that there are stronger relationships with some of the learning objectives, and some objectives have no relationships; some objectives are well matched and others are not. The purpose of this study, understanding relationships between instructors‟ perceptions of learning objectives in FY English Composition courses, will provide us with research to help improve objectives and positively impact instruction.

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This study investigates the effect of multilevelled semanticogrammatical consciousness raising procedures on fossilised verb structures. It is hypothesised that these procedures will reactivate grammaticisation processes leading to the destabilisation of fossilised structures. The study attempts to establish whether fossilised structures can be destabilised, how processes of grammaticisation may be activated, whether adult advanced learners are still able to improve grammatical accuracy levels, what cognitive processes operate in interlanguage change, and how ESL teaching in the primary school classroom may be improved. The subjects are first-year ESL teacher trainees who have been learning English in formal classrooms for eight to ten years. They are subjected to pretests, a ten-week consciousness raising intervention programme, and posttests. The consciousness raising activities are set in a primary school teaching context, thus establishing relevance. The varied strategies used are presented progressively on different levels of consciousness. The theoretical contributions of the study are the insights gained in respect of the psychodynamics of fossilisation and learning theory as it relates to semantico-grammatical consciousness raising within a Cognitive Theory paradigm. According to the findings the total number of verb errors are significantly reduced and self-monitoring and other-monitoring skills significantly improved after the intervention. The semantic value of verb structures evidently acts as a regulator of form: semantically significant structures are destabilised but semantically vacuous structures do not respond to semanticogrammatical consciousness raising strategies. By implication, semantic significance of structures promotes learnabili ty whereas semantic vacuity is conducive to fossilisation. A relatively invariant ability gap between self-monitoring and other-monitoring is also identified. Subjects are significantly better at monitoring structures produced by others than their own. Self-monitoring, which is a necessary prerequisite for interlanguage change, is improved by consciousness raising but is apparently affected negatively by conventional analytical rule-based teaching. This study concludes that multilevelled semantico-grammatical consciousness raising procedures may precipitate defossilisation and that fossilised structures are not necessarily immutable. / Linguistics and Modern Languages / D. Litt. et Phil. (Lunguistics)

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Science in Information Technology in Education

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

published_or_final_version / abstract / Linguistics / Master / Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics

published_or_final_version / abstract / Linguistics / Master / Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics

published_or_final_version / abstract / Linguistics / Master / Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics